


Oh the Life I Might Have Known

by leopardchic79



Series: Take Your Place With Me [1]
Category: Les Miserables, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leopardchic79/pseuds/leopardchic79
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras & Grantaire share a stolen moment at the barricade.  (a.k.a. another little sad/fluffy E/R ficlet)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh the Life I Might Have Known

There was only one way this was going to end.  

He knew that.  Sadly, he was pretty sure that they all knew that too.  And yet their spirits remained high for the time being.  They were… _incorrigible_ , he thought fondly.  Of course much of that spirit centered on their leader.  That was, Grantaire thought, understandable.

He had never been secretive of his feelings for this revolution.  It was ill-fated and doomed to fail.  And maybe, despite their boisterous claims, they had always known that too.  But still, they fiercely believed in their cause.  

Now, they were dangerously close to a point where that belief might start to waver.  If not for Enjolras, it probably would have already.

Of course, if not for Enjolras, none of them would have been here to begin with.

Because, while they all believed in their fight for  _ liberté _ , _égalité_ , and _fraternité_ , none of them truly _lived_ it the way Enjolras did.  He was the reason they had moved past angry talk and conjecture to action.  He was the reason that their ideas had taken fruition and left the back room at the Musain to spill out into the streets of Paris.  He was the reason they were here now behind their barricade of odds and ends of furniture, waiting for the next attack or dawn.  Waiting to die.

He knew that none of them, given the chance, would leave.  They wouldn’t abandon their cause, their friends, their leader.

And somehow, he now found himself in the same position as his hopeless, idealistic friends.  Even though he had no belief or conviction in their cause – or anyone else’s – he was still here.  It was, in the end, for one reason.

Because even though Enjolras had never changed Grantaire’ s cynical mind in regards to their revolution, he _had_ given him something to believe in.  And that was no small feat.  

Grantaire believed in Enjolras.

It was, of course, more than that, and sometimes he wasn’t certain that his belief hadn’t become irreversibly tangled up with his love.  But it didn’t matter.  Grantaire believed in Enjolras, loved Enjolras…would most likely end up dying for Enjolras.

The thing was the cynical voice in his head had tried its hardest to keep him away.  He knew they wouldn’t last long against the National Guard.  And the _people_ whom Enjolras loved to proclaim would come to their aid would remain stagnant.  They may wish for change as an ideal, but standing up for it was a different story and fear was a powerful motivator.  Grantaire knew that.  Enjolras, for all of his intelligence, conviction and love of country, did not.  

His belief that the people would enact their own change was unwavering, and it infuriated Grantaire more than anything else.  The few times he had tried to honestly argue his point – rather than just make snide, drunken comments – Enjolras had rebuffed him quickly and concisely.  He couldn’t see what Grantaire saw quite easily through his cynical world view.

The people may like a good rally and may shout loudly for change, but when the time came for action they turned the other way.  They would turn away now and allow a group of idealistic school boys to die for the change they secretly wanted but couldn’t come to fight for.  The fear of reprisal was just too strong.

So he had briefly tried to talk himself out of ending up here, but it had been a useless argument.  He knew – and had always known since the moment he had laid eyes on Enjolras and had listened to his beautiful, potent words – that he would end up here.  Dying for a cause he didn’t believe in.  Dying for a man he _did_ believe in.  A man he loved desperately.

“I didn’t think you were here.”

Grantaire looked up at the sound of the voice he knew so well.  It sounded tired now.  He shrugged and met Enjolras’ eyes.  They were, as so often happened, unreadable.

“Where else would I be?”

They continued staring at one another for a few moments more, oblivious to the various movements around them.  It was Enjolras who looked away first, eyes drawn back to the barricade.  Grantaire sighed and drank deeply from his bottle of wine, leaning back against the broken piece of a table he sat next to.  He was only there for a minute before Enjolras turned back, pulling him to his feet and tugging him insistently away from the barricade and into the café.

Grantaire followed without argument – he would’ve followed Enjolras anywhere – until they ended up in a back hallway.  Small and relatively quiet.  He waited curiously to see why Enjolras had brought him here and leaned back against the wall, watching him with intent eyes, absently taking another drink of wine.

Enjolras’ eyes narrowed and he knocked the bottle out of his hand angrily.  “Can you not stop drinking for one goddamn minute?!”  He hissed.

Grantaire knew he didn’t expect an answer…something that would normally bait him into giving a sharp one.  But something in Enjolras’ eyes made him stay silent.  They were different than the cool, unreadable look from before.  They were pained and almost…afraid.

Unable to resist, Grantaire reached out and touched his shoulder.  Enjolras darted away instantly, stepping back until he was leaning against the other side of the hallway opposite of him.  As it wasn’t a very large hallway, they were still relatively close.  But Grantaire didn’t reach for him again.

“Enjolras…”

“I didn’t think you were here.”  He repeated his earlier words, but they sounded completely different.  Before they had been an indifferent observation, now they were choked and wounded.

“I don’t want you to be here,” he added before Grantaire could say anything.

Sighing, Grantaire shook his head and held his palms up in surrender.  “I ask you again…where else would I be?”

Enjolras’ eyes clouded over with irritation again and he glared at him in response.  “I don’t know,” he replied angrily.  But this wasn’t his normal Grantaire-related-anger.  There was an unusual sort of desperation in his icy blue eyes.  “At home, at a bar, drunk, passed out… _safe_.”

His last word came out broken and his eyes shone with heartbreak for just a second before he looked down and squeezed them shut.

“I don’t want you to be here,” he repeated, softly this time, the slightest tremble in his golden voice.

Grantaire swallowed hard, eyes widening.  He understood now.

Their moments together had been brief, but strangely perfect.  A few stolen hours here, late nights away from the Musain there; and two blissfully uninterrupted days alone together.  There wasn’t much else that they could claim as a relationship.  Enjolras’ devotion was solely to his cause and to France.  But they had shared an unexpected affection and closeness that had – to Grantaire’s endless surprise – not been one sided.

On some level it was shocking.  He had never had an overabundance of self-esteem and to believe that Enjolras cared anything for him was hard to take.  But he did.  And the evidence was here before his eyes.

He pushed off of the wall and stepped closer to Enjolras, ignoring the aching in his chest.  He reached out carefully and gripped the blonde man’s shoulder.  Enjolras didn’t push him away this time but he remained stubbornly still, eyes open again but fixed on the floor.  Grantaire slid his other hand to the side of Enjolras’ neck and let his thumb brush gently against his jaw.  He tilted his chin up and met his blue eyes bravely.

The sorrow he saw there made Grantaire’s chest ache, but he smiled softly and pressed his forehead against Enjolras’.  Enjolras sucked in a shaky breath and wrapped his arms around Grantaire’s back.  They stayed that way for a few moments without moving, ignoring the sounds from outside and everything else.

Eventually, Grantaire carded his hand through Enjolras’ blonde curls and pulled back a little, other hand still pressed gently against his neck.  Enjolras’ blue eyes were calmer now.

“There’s nowhere else I would be right now,” Grantaire murmured.

“But you don’t believe in any of this,” Enjolras protested.

Grantaire shrugged.  “That’s true.  But I wouldn’t abandon you now.  I wouldn’t do very well without you anyway.”  

He leaned in closer and kissed him.  Enjolras kissed him back warmly, a little desperately, and brought one hand up to tangle in his dark hair.  It was slow but frantic, sweet and harsh.  They were both all too aware that this stolen moment would probably be their last.

When they pulled apart Enjolras pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth and sighed softly, once again resting their foreheads together.  They held each other tightly.  Grantaire let his fingers drag across Enjolras’ neck, down past his unknotted tie, skimming his collarbone and resting against his chest.  

He tilted his head up for another gentle kiss, pulling back only when his fingers slipped beneath an open button in Enjolras’ shirt and found paper instead of skin.  Curious, he looked up at the blonde man with a question in his eyes.

Enjolras smiled a little – the first Grantaire had seen all night – and reached beneath his shirt to pull out a piece of folded parchment.  Grantaire unfolded it with a surprised gasp and looked up at him again.  His heart ached.

It was a sketch of Enjolras.  Grantaire had drawn it during the two days they had spent together in Enjolras’ small flat last winter, stuck there during a blizzard.  Easily, two of Grantaire’s favorite days of his life.  He never thought that Enjolras had kept it.

“You kept this?”

Enjolras nodded.  “Of course,” he answered.  He made it sound so simple.  “And I…I wanted it with me today.”

It was more than Grantaire had ever hoped for.  Enjolras hadn’t wanted him here to face their deaths, but he had kept a piece of their relationship close to his heart.  Knowing that he would die and wanting something of Grantaire with him.

Grantaire pulled him forward, hand on the back of his neck, and kissed him fiercely.  He poured every ounce of his love and devotion into that kiss knowing it would be their last. 

He didn’t believe in their cause, but he believed in Enjolras.  He believed in their love.  And the life they could have had under different circumstances?  That was worth dying for.

**Author's Note:**

> This was rather fun to write. Perhaps I'll do more...


End file.
